My first RL.com blog and the World Cup

Wednesday 2nd September 2009

ANYBODY who knows anything about the history of Rugby League will tell you that there is rarely anything new under the sun in this sport that has never been afraid to be innovative.

As somebody who has been watching the game now for half a century, and who has always taken huge interest in absorbing knowledge from the great writers and inspirational administrators of the past, my role on rugbyleague.com will largely be one of putting current events and issues into some kind of historical perspective. And, at the same time, trying to ensure people can see the “big picture” of what’s best for the game on a worldwide basis rather than descending into the “my club is better than your club” myopia that now seems to bedevil so much of the game’s discussion forums.

Of course, when we talk about sports seeing the “big picture,” nothing could be bigger on a worldwide stage than truly global events like the Olympics or World Cup tournaments. From Rugby League’s point of view, it is going to take a lot of hard work and very smart marketing to avoid fans of our game (to say nothing of our top international players) being left with a feeling of standing on the outside, looking in with our noses pressed against a window as other sports get all the recognition and have all the fun such hugely prestigious events can bring.

It was recently announced that the next Rugby League World Cup will be staged in the U.K. in year 2013. That means it will be sandwiched between the 2012 London Olympics and the 2015 Rugby Union World Cup, both of which we know will be huge media “love ins” on a scale never seen before in this country. Rugby League’s decision-makers and marketeers are really going to have to be on their toes to ensure our World Cup tournament doesn’t get dismissed as just a pale imitation hanging onto the coat-tails of the Rugby Union event, because we all know Rugby League will face its familiar problems from the same tired old sources in the national media determined to undermine it as much as possible.  

It’s strange, I seem to remember the last cricket World Cup was a bit of a disaster, suffering from some chaotic organisation and pathetic crowds. And the cricket World Cup does not involve a huge number of participating nations any more than the Rugby League World Cup might – but nobody tried to undermine cricket’s right to hold a World Cup or to question its status as a serious international sport. Only Rugby League, it seems, has to undergo this kind of treatment.

My advice to Rugby League would be to forget about those critics and just get on with being what it is and enjoying what it has. At the same time, I guess, that also means it should stop trying to pretend it’s something that it is not. Last year’s World Cup in Australia did a pretty good job of doing that but still we got the outside critics who throughout the tournament lambasted it because, in their eyes, it was pointless when everybody knew Australia would win it. The fact that it was New Zealand who won it for the very first time in history, didn’t prompt any back-tracking or admittance of being wrong – their stereotype had been set in stone and, as usual, nobody was really able to articulate Rugby League’s side of the story except the always excellent Phil Gould.     

Our World Cup’s problems with the media of middle Englanders (and beyond) were initially created by the year 2000 tournament which, no matter how hard we try to put a positive spin on the better aspects of it, overall proved to be an expensive embarrassment to our sport.  In sharp contrast, five years earlier in 1995, Rugby League had enjoyed a marvellously uplifting World Cup. What went wrong in the space of five years? Well, an awful lot, but that’s for discussion on a future occasion.

Despite the problems the 2000 World Cup was enduring (not least the appalling weather) back in the British Isles, I can still say I enjoyed some of my best ever World Cup experiences during that tournament by spending the week of its group stages not here, but in France. The France versus Tonga match in front of a capacity crowd at Carcassonne on a Wednesday afternoon in November, 2000, was quite the most colourful and uplifting occasion I have ever attended in all my time in Rugby League, and came as a quite a shock after enduring so many years of low key, poorly attended, depressing defeats in international matches for the French on home soil.  It was proof of just how much good a World Cup can do for Rugby League when it gets things right. Just as it did back in 1954 at the very first tournament which, in case any of our media chums need to be reminded, was fully 33 years before Rugby Union first laid their erroneous claim to the title “Rugby World Cup.”

As for the Olympics, what spin-offs might Rugby League in the U.K. enjoy from the 2012 games being staged in London?  I can’t answer that, but I do know what huge significance comes with the news that from 2016 Rugby Union is going to be able to class itself as an Olympic sport thanks to the inclusion of “rugby” sevens in the world’s greatest sporting showcase. It’s another hugely positive step forward for the Union game, not least because it gives the impression to the world that the word “rugby” means their game and their’s alone (which I believe is very, very sad for Rugby League as it finds its very existence being air-brushed out of the picture to large parts of the globe).

Ironically, not so many years ago, it was Rugby League being mooted as a potential Olympic sport, and not Rugby Union. Back in the early 1990s when the Australian game was really steaming ahead under the leadership of John Quayle and Ken Arthurson, proposals were on the table for League sevens to be included as the demonstration sport in the Sydney Olympics of year 2000. The Aussies had already made a big success of their World Sevens sponsored by Coca-Cola and staged in Sydney, and went out of their way to put national teams from Russia, Japan and the USA on this big stage, as well as a multi-racial South African team. All this was a stepping stone to having the League sevens in the Olympics, included in the sure knowledge that, at that time, Rugby League could attract support and public interest way ahead of any other demonstration sport in Sydney. I remember it being one of the most revealing statements made by the Russians back in the early 1990s as their organisation switched lock, stock and barrel from Union to League, that one of their major reasons was because they wanted to be involved in the version of rugby that was going to be in the Olympics. And at that time, only Rugby League was being considered – something which was of huge annoyance to the French Rugby Union who thought they, as true upholders of the amateur spirit (!) should be the only form of rugby fit for the Olympics.  

I believe it would have been a pivotal moment for Rugby League had things continued as planned with the sevens being included in the Sydney Olympics. But, everything fell apart when, in 1995, the Super League war broke out and our game was cast into turmoil. One of the major casualties was the loss of John Quayle to the Australian game as part of the compromise with Rupert Murdoch’s Super League. No sooner had Quayle been forced out of Rugby League than he was recruited by the Sydney Olympic organising committee for whom he did a mighty successful job. The irony screamed out.

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